The Indigo Heron Group, Inc. » Miscellaneous

Finding the Right Expert Advice

Alora — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 18:53:29 +0000

One of my single biggest frustrations is talking to entrepreneurs and hearing horror stories about having their websites built. I hear them all the time: an entrepreneur pays someone a ridiculous amount of money for five static HTML pages that he/she cannot update themselves, and then disappears, never to be heard from again.

Even worse is when I hear this story and then look at the website, only to discover that it’s hideously ugly, has absolutely abysmal SEO potential and looks like it was built in Frontpage in 1999.

Yet, without fail, I hear this story — or some version of it — at least twice per week. And it drives me batty. Some people are just inexcuseably unscrupulous. Most solopreneuers or small businesses do not need a fancy site, but they need one that they can manage themselves. And yet I rarely see “web consultants” do a proper job of educating their clients on how to get what they truly need, vs. just what a consultant can sell and crank out quickly.

Heather Nolte discusses this same issue on StartupNation’s blog, in her post called, “Can a Consultant Save You Cash…and Heartache?” Like me, Heather recounts how invaluable a good consultant can be, if inserted into your business at the right time.

So, how do you know if your consultant is the right person or just the person who happens to be right there?

Don’t Marry the First Girl You Kiss
An old cliche, to be sure, but beware of this trap. It’s far too easy to be so intimidated by a topic that we grab onto the first person who appears to be able to solve it, but try to resist that urge. I met with a man earlier this year who had been sold on the idea of a whole web package for an insane amount of money. By the time I met with him to discuss what the consultant had proposed, it was too late. The client had swallowed the consultant’s story about what he needed, and they were off to the races.

Shop around. Ask for references. And then, when talking to references, ask them who else you should talk to (these are called second degree references and are often the best sources of information). And, when in doubt, reach out to your network — LinkedIn is especially good for this. Tell people you are interested in contacts that they can personally vouch for. You may be surprised how many of them have recommendations.

Teaching vs. Doing
There are some things in our lives that we simply need to know how to do; there are others that are such rarities or specialties that it is unreasonable to expect us to do as well as the experts. In business, this is even more common. Finding the line can be hard, though. And one of the true hallmarks of a good consultant is that they can tell you where the line is in their field.

For instance: A roofer is not going to suggest that you scramble up a ladder to climb out on your roof and re-shingle it after a storm knocks a tree branch down. However, a good roofer should show you how to watch for the signs that re-shingling needs to be done. He should also give you advise about surrounding tree branches, storm conditions and other things that are reasonable for you to keep an eye on.

Finding a consultant who can DO is important. But finding one who can teach you what you need to do is critical. So be sure to ask, “What do I need to know how to do to make this work/keep this working on an on-going basis?” See what they say. If they say, “Nothing.” be a bit wary and confirm that with a few other sources. Very few things are truly maintenance free.

Educate Yourself
In a world of democratized data, real time communication and personal branding, there is no reason in the world that you shouldn’t be able to spend a couple of hours worth of research, doing a bit of homework before you start meeting with prospective consultants/vendors. Before you start talking to individuals, find the industry experts in the field, the thought leaders, the authors and the business experts who service that marketplace.

Things like Google Blog Search and Twitter Search are amazing sources of information, and with a few key searches, you should be able to find out who the most reputable leaders are in almost any industry, and get a little bit of background so that you don’t walk in to meet with a consultant cold. You do not need to be an expert, but you can’t be blind, either.

Always remember: this is your business. You can’t expect anyone else to be as concerned with it as you are — and that concern starts with making sure that you are prepared to ask good questions, and not pay the wrong person the wrong amount at the wrong time for the wrong services.

Small Business’ Competitive Advantage

Alora — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:31:59 +0000

Author Marc Compeau recently wrote an article on Forbes entitled, Cost-Cutting Won’t Get You There. In it he touches on many points that seem to be recurring lately.

First, the idea that cutting costs are the ticket to solving financial woes. Yes, of course, fiscal discipline is important and if your business is bleeding money because of $200 lunches every day, and last-minute, first-class airline tickets for sales opportunities that could be just as effective via WebEx, then a little fiscal discipline certainly wouldn’t hurt. But the bottom line is that, when it comes down to it, the percentage of over-all gains you are capable of attaining through cost-cutting is never going to stack up to the gains you could make by selling more.

Of course, how do you do that?

In the corollary to the VentureBeat article by Scott Olson to which I responded earlier this week (Excel Where Your Competitors Suck), Marc points out that great customer service is the key. Good customer service builds good relationships and on-going customer loyalty.

This is great news for small businesses. In a 24/7 wired world of automated telephone voice trees, website customer service autobots, offshored customer service techs who have to read from a script to answer the most basic questions and email auto-responders, what is business lacking more than decent customer service?

Small businesses have the ability to impact their customers’ perceptions on this front than large businesses do. Without the large staff, training problems and lack of personal accountability that major corporations face among their ranks, small business owners with small teams can focus on delivering real customer value without making the customer feel like they are a neusance.

There is an added bonus to keep in mind, too: people are far more forgiving of mistakes if they feel like your heart is in the right place. A faceless corporation will almost always lose that battle, because it is too impersonal. A small business, with one-on-one relationships that provides a sense of value to their customers is always going to be better positioned to bouncing back from life’s unavoidable errors.

Your customers talk. And at least some of the people they talk to are other potential customers. What are they saying about you and your business? Give them something (positive) worth talking about, and see where it leads.

Scrappy Swimlane High Level Overview

Alora — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:57:16 +0000

Much thanks to Sherry Lowry from Bridging Futures for this picture. As with all items of this type, it’s eerily familiar enough to be both hysterical and cringe-worthy for those of us who make a career out of this. (Click on the image to see the details.)

There is No Strategy if You Don't Manage Your Team

Alora — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:55:24 +0000

I often find myself frustrated dealing with people who sell themselves as “high level strategists.” I am not talking about consultants who are hired to help hone and build out a strategic vision for an organization; nor am I talking about internal specialists who are dedicated to researching and advising on strategic direction. What I am talking about are managers or department heads who identify as “strategic visionaries” and who consider the banalities of “management” to be less important than defining an over-arching strategy.

The single biggest issue I find when I come into an organization to help get things back on-track, is that when leaders are entirely pre-occupied with a strategic vision, there is a tendency to ignore employee development and management activities.

The irony, of course, is that a good strategist understands that employees are the key to making their strategic vision come to life. Yet time and time again, I have found that groups with the most strategically-focused leaders are the ones where the employees are the most neglected.

The problem, I believe, is in the misalignment of how a leader identifies — and what they actually like to do — versus what is part of the responsibility of the role. How many people who consider themselves innovators, visionaries and strategists are placed in the role of manager? And, honestly, much about managing people is terribly “innovative”? Very little of it. Managing people is down-n-dirty work.

Someone who manages people has to deal with messy details like:

team members who don’t get along
people who are not living up to expectations
talented people who are bored thanks to being under utilized
political entanglements with other departments
hiring freezes that prevent backfilling vacated positions
low morale among teams
budgetary constraints that prevent a manager from paying an employee what they are truly worth
helping form a career development plan so team members don’t stagnate
being honest with a staff member when there is no future for them with the organization

Face it, none of that is sexy. But someone who can’t or won’t do those things is not someone who should be managing people. And yet it happens all the time: a strategically oriented leader is put in the role of a manager, because leadership likes the idea of having a strong strategic direction developed for the department.

Nothing wrong with that. Of course the best departments are marching towards a strategic vision. But if you don’t take care of your team in the process, who exactly is doing the marching?

Scrappy Swimlane High Level Overview

Alora — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 16:57:16 +0000

100 Ways to Kill a Concept

Alora — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:42:21 +0000

Otherwise known as “How NOT to lead people, teams or projects.”

Alternately, “What you should never say to anyone you care about.”

the boss won’t go for that.
the lawyers won’t go for that.
the accountants won’t go for that.
the client won’t go for that.
the salespeople won’t go for that.
the investors won’t go for that.
So and so won’t like it.
It’s not us.
It won’t fit into our system.
We’re not ready for that yet.
I don’t think it will work.
I don’t understand.
Do you understand?
Will anyone understand?
What will they think of next?
It’s politically incorrect.
It’s too complicated.
It’s too late for that now.
It’s too expensive.
We’ll lose money.
Why?
What!?
Who says?
nobody will want that.
Where are you coming from?
It can’t be done.
Have the committee review it.
Let’s do more research.
Let’s take a vote on it.
Let’s play devil’s advocate.
I’ve never heard of such a thing.
We’ve already tried that.
that’s been done before.
It’s not how we do things here.
We’ve never done anything like that.
We’ll get back to you.
that’s a subject for another meeting.
It creates more problems than it solves.
Sounds like too many problems.
that only solves some of the problems.
that’s going to cause problems.
Here we go again.
that’s unique, but . . .
Very interesting, but . . .
I understand, but . . .
I love it, but . . .
Great idea, but . . .
Yes, but . . .
Sounds simple, but . . .
But . . .
It’s just not for us.
try again.
that sucks.
needs more pizzazz!
I don’t like it.
Have you thought it through?
It won’t sell.
Maybe next time.
Another day.
What are people going to say?
People will think we’re nuts!
that’s BS.
Be realistic.
How about this instead?
Get a grip!
Are you serious?
that turns me off!
the client is too liberal for that.
the client is too conservative for that.
What else do you have?
So!
So what?
Oh . . .
Oh?
Oh, really!
Get real, it’s not feasible.
Sounds crazy!
nobody does that.
Are you kidding me?
that’s too off the wall.
You can’t argue with success.
You can’t fight City Hall.
We don’t have time to do it.
Let’s not reach beyond our grasp.
We’re overextended already.
Let’s wait ‘til we see the numbers.
You’re proposing what?
Let’s not rock the boat.
Silence.
Laughter.
Boos.
Where did that come from?
I’ve got a better idea.
Hey, there’s a recession going on.
We’ve never done anything like that.
the press will kill us.
that’s not your decision to make.
We’ll step on too many toes.
Just leave it to me; I’ll take care of it.
You could lose your job for that . . .

To Say Agile, Or Not to Say Agile… That is the Question

Alora — Wed, 06 May 2009 12:41:42 +0000

I had an interesting conversation yesterday after I gave a presentation. I was talking about the necessary functions — particularly when it comes to communications, documentation, change management and entry/exit criteria — of project management in an Agile development process.

The “interesting” conversation I had afterward was because one of the attendees (in a private conversation) busted me for never once using the word “Agile” in my presentation. I’ve told him that it was deliberate, and here’s why:

What’s in a Name?

“Agile Development” is bullshit in and of itself. I don’t like or use this phrase because it’s a dangerous misnomer. As I’ve written about before, either your entire organization is going to be “Agile” or none of it is. You can’t just have “Agile Development” and expect that Project Management, Design, Testing and everything else won’t be impacted. The trouble is that Agile is all too often discussed, described, evaluated and generally understood as it applies to development only, leaving other aspects of the project lifecycle out in the cold.

The Methodology Myth

I have been in startup development environments for my entire career. And if there is one concrete, immutable fact I have learned it is that no startup environment is mature or stable enough to completely adopt and implement any pure methodology within any discipline — not requirements, not development, not project management, not testing. It simply does not happen — nor should it. While most development environments will dabble with some aspects of Agile, the fact is that — like all process — it is typically really a hybrid between a couple of different approaches, in combination with some home grown goodies, that is all tossed together to come up with something that fits the organization. Any other approach is folly.

You Say Potato, I Say Potaaaaaaaaaaaaato

One of the problems that has evolved over the years when it comes to Agile is at the heart of it’s value. As a methodology, Agile is specifically about results more than form or procedure. As an execution-oriented person in startup environments, I praise the focus on results. However, as a project manager, I also have to say that I have seen far, far too many developers use the methodology as an excuse for being lazy and sloppy about writing documentation. I used to debate with one of the Development Managers/Architects at JetBlue all the time: he was a huge advocate of adopting Agile methodologies, and I would always tell him that he needed to be careful of the language he used, unless he wanted to see a backlash from project and functional managers who’d been burned by this in the past.

He Said, She Said

Another problem with the language we use to describe Agile (in combination with the myth that it is or should be a dev-only consideration) is that, grammatically speaking, the word agile and the name Agile are often used interchangeably, even though they are not identical. This is particularly problematic when it comes to non-tech executives who hear “agile development” and think that means they are just going to get their project executed more quickly. All too often, I’ve seen Agile evangelists “sell” leadership teams on the idea that Agile is the way to go, without ever really explaining (in business-speak) what that means, what that will take and why it is of value. Even worse, most of the time, those evangelists actually think they really did explain it well.

Pragmatic Agnosticism

In the end, however, my biggest reason for not including the word “Agile” in my presentation is because, when it comes specifically to the core project management disciplines of communication, documentation, change management and entry/exit criteria, methodology agnosticism is key. This is never more true than in a startup where things are guaranteed to change before you have your Gantt Charts unpacked. Some of the tactical details may be different — whether it’s roles and responsibilities, sequence of events, etc. — the the underlying tenets are the same. And any project manager who says that communication, documentation and change management are fundamentally different in an Agile environment vs. a Waterfall environment are blowing smoke.

In the end, project management is a disciplined centered around the concept of integration. And integration is about effectively combining the efforts and products of multiple different disciplines into a final product of value. That can’t happen without communication, which includes at least some degree of written artifact (often around entry/exit criteria), and managing the inevitabilities of change. So, in a 45-minute presentation, it made more sense to me to skip over the great and eternal methodology debate, and move straight on to the basics that universally apply, regardless of what approach a team is taking to getting the work done.

I’m not entirely sure that the person I was speaking with agreed with my approach. And, in hindsight, I should have taken a moment at the beginning to state that I was going to be speaking from a methodology neutral standpoint. Definitely my over-sight there. I’ll be more conscientious of that in the future.

But people who want to get religious about a methodology can espouse whatever they like, but in the end, you have to be pragmatic in order to deliver a project (much less a recurring series of projects). And zealotry is never pragmatic.

Technical PM Presentation

View more presentations from Alora Chistiakoff.

Qualities of a Great Speaker – Connecting with the Audience

Alora — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 15:50:59 +0000

The last speaking quality I want to cover in my series on what makes a quality public speaker is the ability of a speaker to connect with their audience. There are thousands of ways to do this, and how a speaker goes about it will often be dictated by a combination of their content (as is often the case when discussing tragedies) or based on their personality (the class clown syndrome is a common approach for this).

A key mistake that speakers often make is in ‘preaching to the choir.’ If they assume their audience is already on the same page that they are when it comes to why they should care about the speaker’s topic, then the speaker misses the opportunity to get other people on their bandwagon. I think this is a particular risk at professional conferences/events, because speakers will often assume that all (or at least most) of the audience is coming from the same point of view as they are, so they don’t need to spend a lot of time or effort getting everyone on the same page.

Particularly in the interactive/web space, this is a fallacy. The large-scale web world covers a lot of very different disciplines that attract radically different personality types. A typical event at a conference like SXSW or Web 2.0 Expo will have audience members who are both executives and individual contributors, tech staff as well as marketing people, Baby Boomers and Gen Y, early adopters and ludite-inclined pragmatists, small company startup entrepreneurs and large enterprise, career professionals. The gulf among audience members is huge and should never be neglected. Even at smaller, more specialized conferences like PubCon South the array of specialities in the audience was very broad. Neglecting to take this into account when speaking is a mistake that several speakers continue to make.

As with my assessment of the first two qualities, Educational Value and Authenticity, here are the list of the speakers I saw recently and how I’d rate them when it comes to their ability to connect with an audience.

	Charlene Li Connection with the Audience: C Details:There is probably some irony to the fact that, at SXSW, Charlene Li’s discussion about the future of social networks (that they’d be ubiquitous, so that they’re impact would be more connective and meaningful) really kind of missed the mark. There were examples she used that illustrated her point, but none of them were particularly meaningful ways for her to connect to the audience, and I think this is for two reasons: the aforementioned authenticity problem, and the fact that most of what she was saying was very strategic, and therefore abstract. While that is what she is hired to do on a daily basis, again, it made her sound like she was talking to an Executive Committee, not an audience of practitioners, fans and people looking to learn. Much of what she was saying was too high level and far removed from people’s immediate reality to be anything more personal than a moderately interesting intellectual exercise. Again, her panel with Peter Kim and Jeremiah Owyang at Expo was the opposite. Because their topic was specifically about the ways in which organizations are unsuccessful in their attempts to implement social networking, the entire discussion was much more specific and tactical. It was therefore much more relatable for the audience. And people came away from it with a much stronger sense of value, and a much clearer sense of how the topic could relate to their daily lives. So, again, Charlene’s score is a mid-point between two opposite extremes.
	Chris Anderson Connection with the Audience: C Details:Chris Anderson seemed to be relying on Guy to help him find a way to connect with the audience (or, maybe more accurately, was simply relying on Guy to be the one to connect with the audience). Chris seemed to fall victim to his intellect and his discomfort with the spotlight, and it seemed that whatever bit of audience-connecting he accomplished was mostly due to circumstance. Because much of his point was based on economic theory and a lot abstract philosophy being manifested in our current Industrial-to-Information Age transition, if this isn’t a topic that someone already cared a lot about, by himself, Anderson probably wasn’t enough to get them interested. Kawasaki’s influence and audience participation provided whatever degree of connection to the audience this talk ultimately managed.
	Chris Brogan Connection with the Audience: B Details:Chris Brogan’s ability to connect with the audience is definitely enhanced by his level of authenticity. But, from what I saw, in most cases it is facilitated most by responding to specific audience questions. On his own, Brogan is much like Kawasaki in that he is authentic and entertaining, but will spend more time telling stories that make you laugh, than with connecting to an audience’s personal experience much beyond than that. However, given the opportunity to do some Q&A, he does make up for that a bit.
	Gary Vaynerchuk Connection with the Audience: A Details:Gary Vaynerchuk is all about enthusiastically connecting with his audience. When the moderator for his talk made it clear that the one hour he was on stage was basically going to be nothing but Q&A with the audience, Gary was visibly excited and eagerly jumped in to get the ball rolling. Every answer he gave was enthusiastic, personal and (often) disarmingly honest. When one woman asked if she could have a hug, he bounded off the stage, and gave her a bear hug that lifted her off the ground. Gary’s highly social nature made every single person who asked him a question feel like they were the center of the conversation. Every speaker who wants to understand how to better engage an audience should see Gary speak to a large crowd at least once, because it’s a very compelling case study for the value of connecting with the audience.
	Guy Kawasaki Connection with the Audience: B Details:Guy Kawasaki walks the line a bit at times between engaging the audience very directly, and merely talking to them. It’s an interesting dance to watch, and one that he can probably only get away with because he is funny and charming and authentic enough to avoid having it come across as unpleasantly arrogant. On the other hand, Guy is also probably one of the more adaptive speakers I saw all conference season, and he’s very able to shift gears mid-speach if it proves necessary. He was also the only one I saw who went from interviewee to interviewer, which he handled exceptionally well (though, as interviewer he still dominated the conversation a bit at times; though I do think it was situation-appropriate, given that it seemed to be part of what Chris Anderson needed in order to keep things flowing fairly comfortably). So I’d say that Guy gets a decent grade when it comes to connecting with an audience, because he clearly knows how to do it — it seems to be just a matter of whether or not he feels like it at the time.
	Larry Lessig Connection with the Audience: D Details:Unfortunately Larry Lessig’s authenticity did not help him much when it came to connecting with his audience. It could have — and in another format, it may have been easier for him to do — but in the end, because he didn’t find a way to truly get the audience to understand where he was coming from, his authentically passionate conviction on his topic was almost wasted. Again, this is probably a good example of why the format is so important, because Larry’s topics of interest are so big, they require time to develop the context in order for his points to be truly relatable. The irony is that most people in this space are probably highly pre-disposed to agreeing with much of what he has to say; but the problem is that, if you didn’t come in the room knowing that already, you didn’t get enough perspective from the discussion to be able to be on the same wave-length as Larry when he started getting passionate about some of his points. In the end, Larry was preaching to a very small choir of people who came into the room already knowing that they agreed with him, instead of showing the majority of the audience that what he was saying does, in fact, relate to them and show them why they should (or do) care about it. Again, in another format this may have worked better, but as part of a larger panel, he did not have the opportunity to flesh this out.
	Matt Cutts Connection with the Audience: A Details:Matt Cutts had an interesting challenge at PubCon South: he was announcing a new technology release from his team, and had to make a room full of non-technical people understand why they should care and why it was actually relevant to them. Not an easy task, but one which was largely successful. So Matt ends up with major props for connecting with his audience. And even after he moved on to other topics, both in terms of the things he chose to speak about and the ways in which he answered questions, were all very deliberately centered around an audience point of view. He never once talked over their heads (which would have been easy to do inadvertantly), and yet he never “dumbed down” his answers so much that he sounded patronizing. It was a very effective line to walk, and one that allowed him to connect to both technical and non-technical members of the audience at the same time.
	Tony Hsieh Connection with the Audience: A Details:Tony Hsieh did a great job connecting with his audience because his theme is so universal: everyone wants to feel valued and everyone wants to be happy. His entire talk was about building an organization and developing a culture where individuals feel like they are contributing value and providing tactical, relatable examples of how Zappos does this, and what makes their approach different from the way other organizations do this. Combined with his very authentic (nervous) style, Tony’s message very strongly resonates with the audience, because it is about fixing something that is fundamentally broken in so many companies — yet it’s something that is a universal human craving.

The clearest lesson to me when it came to connecting with an audience was about the difference between a strategic discussion and a tactical one. Connecting with an audience is about making what you have to say truly relevant to them, and in most cases this needs concrete, personal examples. While some of us do enjoy the higher level theory and philosophy, that isn’t the way to get your message to resonate with the majority of an audience. If you want people to walk out of the room feeling inspired, they have to feel empowered. Abstract theory rarely does that.

The next biggest lesson was about a speaker’s energy level. It is contegeous. This is why Charlene Li sounding like a consultant presenting a PowerPoint to a group of investors could never compare to Gary Vaynerchuk bounding off the stage to give a woman in an audience a hug that lifted her off her feet. And while one could argue that it is an apples-to-oranges comparison (and I wouldn’t disagree), in the end it doesn’t matter, because the bottom line is that, as a speaker, your goal should always be to leave an audience feeling like the time they gave you was a worthwhile investment on their part. At SXSW Gary and Charlene spoke in the same room to about the same size audience. When Charlene’s event was over, people shuffled out of the room and meandered down the halls to their next destination. Conversely, when Gary’s event was over, the energy level of the audience was sky-high. People flew out of the room, eager to get to their next event, and so energized that they were ready to take on the world. The difference was staggering and impossible to miss.

All in all, watching the variety of speakers on the array of topics I saw was an intersting evaluation of quality. Obviously some were better than others. Some tried to rely strictly on content; while others relied exclusively on personal style. I think that both of those are a mistake and undermined the end result, because you need both to at least some degree in order to leave an audience with a great experience.

Ultimately, like all other talents, public speaking comes very naturally to some people, while other people really have to work at it in order to be good. So while I would never say it’s something that ‘anyone can do with enough practice,’ I will say that you don’t have to be a natural in order to find a way to become good at it with time and effort — assuming you are properly motivated.

I’d be interested to hear what you think. Disagree with my assessment of these speakers strengths and weaknesses? Think I missed an important quality that makes a difference? Please leave me a comment and let me know.

Qualities of a Great Speaker – Authenticity

Alora — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:38:56 +0000

In my original blog post on this topic, the second quality I listed as being necessary in a great speaker is authenticity. Authenticity is difficult to quantify, but we know it when we see it. And when it comes to a speaker, it makes a huge difference in how we view what they say.

A speaker’s authenticity can come from any number of places: it can be rooted in the passion they feel for their subject matter, or it can be rooted in their expertise; it can be conveyed through confidence, or it can be conveyed through anxiety. More often than not, authenticity is the key to the third quality, which is whether or not a speaker is able to connect with an audience. It is probably just about impossible to think that you can connect with an audience without first being authentic (though, it is possible to be authentic without connecting with the audience), and so authenticity has an almost disproportionate impact on the over-all audience experience.

As with my assessment of the first quality, Educational Value, here are the list of the speakers I saw recently and how I’d rate them.

	Charlene Li Speaker’s Authenticity: C Details:Charlene Li is an interesting case when it comes to speaker’s authenticity, and it raises a point that most people may not consider: format and it’s effect on how comfortable a speaker is. I eagerly looked forward to the opportunity to see Charlene speak at SXSW. She was on the big stage, alone, in front of an audience of about 1300 people. Her content was solid as mentioned before, but I still walked away from that event completely disappointed. Why? Because she spoke to the audience like she was talking to a Board of Directors. She did not strike the right note with the audience, and it made her sound, well, like a consultant: overly polished, overly managed, overly trained and — ultimately — inauthentic. It took me several days before I could get past the ill-fitting style to retrace my memory and find much in the way of interesting nuggets in her content. Definitely not what you want if you are a speaker. Conversely, when Charlene spoke at Web 2.0 Expo it was on a panel with her friends Peter Kim and Jeremiah Owyang. And instead of sounding stiff and removed from her audience the way she did at SXSW, she sounded engaged, sincere and authentic. She was much more human during her Expo speaking engagement, and my suspicion is that it was due to, in some combination, having a smaller, less formal setting, and sharing the stage (and thereby the dialogue) with other people — particularly with friends and former colleagues she knows well enough to relax and truly trust. In the end, it made all the difference, and I wished it had been the first time I’d seen her speak instead of SXSW, because it was much closer to the experience I’d been hoping for and expecting. So she gets a very low score for authenticity for the SXSW talk, and then gets it brought back up a bit thanks to a salvaging performance at Expo.
	Chris Anderson Speaker’s Authenticity: B Details:Chris Anderson is another interesting example, because based on a distant view, he strikes me as an introvert who recognizes that public speaking is part of what he needs to do, both in his role as Editor of Wired and as an author of high-profile business books. But nothing in how he presents himself — either in person or online — particularly suggests that he’s so much of a ham that he truly loves that side of his work (see his very unassuming online presence, and you’ll understand what I mean). And while I could certainly be wrong, my suspicion is that the reason his engagement at SXSW was formatted the way it was (an onstage “interview” conducted by Guy Kawasaki) was precisely for that reason (and to take advantage of the fact that Guy most certainly is a ham who enjoys being onstage). Whatever the reason, Chris came across as extremely authentic, but a little bit shell shocked at times. Clearly Chris is a very bright person, but part of the reason I got the feeling he was nervous was because when he’d get ‘in a zone’ while he was talking about something he was clearly confident about, he’d relax and he could be spontaneous and exchange quips with Guy. But other times, it appeared as though he was so aware of the audience/lights/being on stage, that he would be out-of-step and miss easy opportunities to maintain his end of the repartee. It didn’t have a huge impact on his authenticity necessarily, but it was a little distracting at times. All in all, though, Chris gets a solid score for authenticity.
	Chris Brogan Speaker’s Authenticity: A Details:Chris Brogan is a ham. Pure and simple. He is relaxed, entertaining, amusing and engaging when he speaks — when it comes to both the people with whom he is sharing the stage, as well as the audience. He goes to the opposite extreme of what we saw of Charlene Li at SXSW, in that he doesn’t come across as stiff or stiffled or repressed in any way. His emotion is genuine and spontaneous, and if he gets annoyed or disagrees with something someone says, his response is entirely from the gut. While this may not be the quality that a Fortune 500 looks for in a highly polished consultant, this makes Chris an absolute winner with audiences (and makes it easier for him to skate through events where educational content is a little bit thin).
	Gary Vaynerchuk Speaker’s Authenticity: A Details:Gary Vaynerchuk is off-the-charts. Ham doesn’t even come close. And, because he operates at the perpetually high emotional pitch that he does, I doubt he could be inauthentic if his life depended on it (in fact, one of his stories was specifically about how, no matter how much he hated breaking his mother’s heart as a child, no amount of loving his mom could keep him from ‘being himself’ in school — which typically amounted to lousy grades and getting into constant trouble). He is like young kid who has yet to refine his social filters, and so he highly excitable. Fortunately, he also has an extremely positive and upbeat disposition, so his excitability is usually both optimistic and contagious. While Gary’s style is most definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, if what you crave most in a speaker is unvarnished authenticity, then I suggest making the effort to see Gary speak when you get the chance.
	Guy Kawasaki Speaker’s Authenticity: A Details:Guy Kawasaki is an interesting individual to see in action. I saw him twice in less than a week, and the first time he was being interviewed (by Chris Brogan) and the second time he was the one conducting the interview (Chris Anderson). And both times it was clear that, if Guy ever did have stage fright, he’s long-since conquered it. It seems unlikely, though. Like Brogan and Vaynerchuk, my money is on the idea that Guy is just a bit of an entertainer at heart, and enjoys being on stage. As a result, he is relaxed, engaging and clearly able to help put someone who is less comfortable (like Chris Anderson) at ease a bit by being on stage with them, and difusing some of the spotlight glare. He also banters well with an audience, and plays to their leanings, which further enhances his authenticity, because it shows he’s listening. Guy also comes across as a bit on the cocky side, but that’s easy to understand given his background. He manages to avoid being so cocky that he ends up being truly off-putting.
	Larry Lessig Speaker’s Authenticity: A Details:Larry Lessig is almost too authentic for his own good in some ways. Because he feels so passionately about the work he is doing, when he speaks about it he can get very emotional — sometimes disproportionately to those around him. Lessig is at a bit of a disadvantage in my comparison because he’s the only speaker I am evaluating whom I only saw as part of a panel with other people, but the lessons I saw from that were very telling: he clearly feels very strongly about his causes, but (like many activists) he is lives with his subject matter every day, and sometimes seems to forget that his audience may not be as well-versed in his topic as he is. And so he can end up looking a little bit emotional if he doesn’t make sure he is bringing his audience along with him. I’ll get to this more in the next post, but on the actual authenticity front, Lessig scores high.
	Matt Cutts Speaker’s Authenticity: A Details:Matt Cutts is one of my favorite surprises from conference season. Matt is a well-known figure in the world of search and SEO/SEM. Not coming from that world, I had no idea who he was when he got on stage. And I was pleasantly surprised by everything I saw, not the least of which was that, as a man in a profession that is highly populated with extreme introverts, Matt was impressively relaxed in front of an audience. He had news he was excited to share, and he was very engaging, funny, charming and sincere in his interactions with the audience. His enthusiasm was contegeous and his demeanor was highly approachable. All in all, Matt gets high points for authenticity.
	Tony Hsieh Speaker’s Authenticity: A Details:Tony Hsieh is so authentic it almost hurts. And what is particularly interesting, is that Tony’s authenticity is for reasons that are almost the polar opposite of Brogan, Vaynerchuk or Kawasaki’s: it’s because he stands on-stage and looks like a man terrified of being there, nervous as hell, but yet so passionate about his message that he’s learned to beat back his anxiety over the years. It was a very interesting example to watch, because there were times when he looked tremendously nervous and uncomfortable, but was clearly pushing through to the other side. He rarely looked relaxed, and it makes me wonder if maybe a different format (a la the Brogan/Kawasaki or Kawasaki/Anderson “interviews”) may have helped keep him from feeling as ‘put on the spot,’ but he gets definite props for pushing through his own discomfort to share his story, specifically because it’s clear that not only is he very proud of what his people have accomplished, but that he is sincere in his hope that others can learn from what they’ve done and build organizations in a more humane and positive way.

I saw tons of people speak over the course of conference season to date, and each speaker’s authenticity was essential to the ultimate value of the time I dedicated to listening to them. By and large, authenticity was the one thing that most of them had working in their favor — and, if used properly, it does often help to compensate for a speaker’s other short-comings.

Have a different take on any of these speakers or on the role of authenticity when it comes to the public speaking experience?

Qualities of a Great Speaker – Educational Value of Content

Alora — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 00:03:11 +0000

As noted in my previous blog post on this topic, the first quality I believe is necessary in a great speaker is for them to be educational in some way. In my recent bout of conferences, I have seen speakers who fall all over the quality spectrum, but the ones that were truly good ensured they shared something new with an audience.

In the interest of a clean comparison, I will use the same list of speakers — covering the spectrum of topics — across all three categories. A few of these speakers I saw more than once, in which case my ranking takes into account each time I saw them in a public speaking setting, even if the format changed (i.e. if they were a solo speaker in one case vs. on a panel with others in another).

	Charlene Li Educational Value of Content: B Details:Charlene’s background as Forrester analyst gives her access to a lot of information. This is certainly helpful when pulling together a presentation. While there wasn’t anything tremendously earth-shattering in her information either time I saw her speak, her content was solid and her examples were clear and well-presented. Particularly in her main address at SXSW, however, she made at least one leap of logic that she was clearly hoping the audience would share, and seemed a bit surprised and unsure how to respond when there was a difference of opinion. Her assertion was that Google “wouldn’t dare” violate their user’s trust by compromising their personal data. She left this as a blanket statement without explaining on why she felt this was the case. An audience of 1,300 people were not as universally quick to buy into her belief as she was.
	Chris Anderson Educational Value of Content: A Details:Though probably best known as the Editor of Wired and the author of The Long Tail, Chris was on-stage at SXSW (with Guy Kawasaki) principally to discuss his new book, Free. From a content standpoint, Chris knows his stuff. And I was in a constant scramble to jot down notes of things he was saying that I wanted to research in more depth later, because he was making some great points and doing some very interesting historical and economic comparisons. He clearly had the material for a graduate seminar that would have been very interesting, and it was too bad the schedule and format did not allow him to share more.
	Chris Brogan Educational Value of Content: D Details:In the multiple times I saw Chris speak in the month of March, I am not sure I honestly remember once where he shared a piece of new information. He gets props in other areas, but educational value was very low. He had a couple of anecdotes that were insightful, and the questions he had for Guy Kawasaki during their “fireside chat” at PubCon elicited some good discussion, so he gets a bit of credit on that front. By and large, though, the strengths Chris demonstrated during the times that I saw him were not in the educational value of his content.
	Gary Vaynerchuk Educational Value of Content: B Details:Gary is a sneaky devil who walks the line on content. In a perfect situation, he will spend his entire talk on audience Q&A and entirely avoid the need to generate original content himself. He’ll ‘crowdsource’ his content by leaving it up to the audience and simply answering their questions. So I’d mark him down points on that, but then give him high marks for providing good, detailed, tactical answers that are chock full of actual educational content. And, as a person with a tremendous curiosity and range of interests (and deep expertise in some areas), he ends up being a font of juicy nuggets of information — assuming someone thinks to ask questions in the right areas.
	Guy Kawasaki Educational Value of Content: C Details:Aside from good anecdotes, Guy seems to reserve most educational content for his written efforts (Twitter, blog, books, etc.), and uses his speaking engagements for the “lighter-weight” aspects of personal branding. To be sure, some of his anecdotes are phenomenal, but they usually play more towards humor and simply being “good stories” than being truly valuable, reusable lessons or insights. Though, to be fair, he did toss out a few gems here and there, and out of the handful of times I saw him speak, I did get a few particularly good ideas — though these seemed to be very tool-specific, based on the opinion of a self-avowed technology lover. He did also do a good job of eliciting good content out of Chris Anderson during their shared event at SXSW.
	Larry Lessig Educational Value of Content: A Details:Larry is a lawyer, a professor, a writer, an activist and the founder of Creative Commons. He is all about the content (literally and figuratively, as a matter of fact). I’ll cover style in a subsequent post, but his content was detailed, specific and entirely relevant to the topic at hand. If you could write fast enough to keep up with him, you’d easily get valuable information when he speaks.
	Matt Cutts Educational Value of Content: A Details:Matt knows his stuff cold. Inside and out. And he is there to share information. So Matt gets all A’s when it comes to content. As a developer, Matt can give super technical information (and did); but as a smart speaker, he knows how to de-geekify his content when his audience is not developer-centric. So he gets double-points on content: not only is it valuable, but he also de-mystifies what could easily be intimidating material and makes it extremely accessible for non-technical audiences. He also has a great advantage over some speakers when it comes to content: because his main topic (search) is a constantly evolving field, his material is always being updated, so there is no real danger of content stagnation with Matt.
	Tony Hsieh Educational Value of Content: A Details:From what I heard from people who’d seen Tony at previous speaking events, his content didn’t really change much, so if you’ve seen him once, you may have already heard most of what he had to say, but if you haven’t seen him yet, make sure you do at the first available opportunity. His message on leadership, management, building a company, brand and culture is packed with valuable information. Like Guy Kawasaki, he uses lots of anecdotes. The difference is that his are targeting a point, rather than merely being entertaining. His stories are well-selected to illustrate his points, and his points are insightful and compelling. I found it common that he would speak on topics I knew a lot about, and still managed to say something new.

So these are my scores for the educational value of the content. As I’ve mentioned before, I saw tons of people speak over the course of conference season to date. I selected these examples here because they are well-known names most people have heard of. I also selected them because they represented a great cross-section of public speaking strengths and weaknesses in the three areas I outlined as essential: educational value, authenticity and emotionally connecting with the audience.

Have you seen any of these speakers and have different experiences about their content?